Shocking reports from care homes

Pikachu this is indeed a dreadful situation for Care Homes. A lot of staff are actually living at the Homes so they can care for their residents and not infect their families.
They are people who are low paid and receive only minimal training. I applaud their courage and kindness. We tend to see only Care Homes for older people but there are Homes for those with learning disabilities, physical disabilities etc. The staff deserve far more support than they are getting.

Meanwhile, hedgefund managers rake in millions. Disgusting.

I see Cummings ghost in the background. Eugenics in full flow.

Yes its truly terrifying. The most vulnerable people in our society seemed to be abandoned and when they die are not even included on death rate. I know the stats are collected differently but it just seems like they are once again forgotten about. Can't say anymore than that really just so sad.

Shows what a civilised country we are

It's not just in this country, Spain found that people had been abandoned in their care homes. However it's truly horrific.

My resident 21year old GD is in this situation.

She works in the kitchen of a local care home.

Information about residents are kept quiet, but a lot of the residents are in infection control,she can see by the different coloured trays indicating this.
Many of the residants are dying and covid19 is present in the home,which has been receiving elderly patients from a nearby hospital who are "bed blockers" and also infected.

They have been told there is to be no PPE.
The staff are all underinformed and largely untrained,residants with dementia are all allowed to roam freely,and unchecked through the home,spreading infection.

I am now self isolating just in case it is brought home as a carrier or infection,I will arrange for shopping previously bought weekly to be dealt with by a local help group.

It is a truly heartbreaking situation,for both if us,she is bank staff working nigh on 60 hours a week most weeks,with the worry that if it where to come home it may cause my demise,she already has lost her mum aged 4,I have been both parents to her since then.

Dreadful and also people being asked to sign DNR forms. I hope the government is held to account over this situation.

It would be difficult if not almost impossible to prevent people with dementia from wandering around the establishment downtoearth
I'm sorry you are both in this difficult and sad situation. Well done to your granddaughter for working so hard to care for others. Food must be very important at this time so she has a vital role there.

Where's the financial incentive for these carers ??

I know all about some of the disgusting conditions that carers have to battle through when my D worked for a well known private company years ago as an agency worker.
Some of the things she used to tell me had us both in tears and I had threatened to open up but we never knew if it was management at fault or the bloody-mindedness of the one's in charge of each individual home.

There was a woman on the local news last night who is a cook in a care home. She has decided to self-isolate there with the residents as have other staff.
She has small children herself and hasn't seen them for weeks.
Staff like that deserve our utmost admiration.

My FiL care home have no cases as yet but they did say they will not be taken to hospital if they have a DNR on their care plan. My FiL requested this so we know he isn’t going to hospital and many families know this too.

I thunk that the situation in care homes is appalling and needs addressing. Most of the residents in these homes are paying up to £1200 a week for this dreadful treatment.

My mum is in hospital waiting for discharge to a care home - it has been agreed that she can no longer live alone due to her Alzheimers, falls risk and her determination to carry on going out shopping several times a day! She will be tested for Covid 19 before she leaves but it is likely that she will go to a care home that already had the virus among some residents.

I am so worried, we have no choice in where she goes, we won't be able to visit her and mum will be confined to isolation in her room. At the moment she is really happy in hospital with lots of people to chat to, regular meals and unlimited tea and biscuits. She is a bit of a wanderer around the ward and corridors so the nurses allow her into the day room to sit with them at meal times and to watch TV.

She will be so unhappy confined to her room and I worry that she will become aggressive then they will end up sedating her. But she cannot go home and this awful virus has left us with very limited options.

It's as if these people have been abandoned and i want to fight it. I have already written my both my MP ( no reply) and mums MP who just gave a very bland, noncommittal response.

Where's jura when you need her!

I think I agree with what she posted a while ago; if you were extremely elderly, near the end of a good life, unable to look after yourself and needing aid for help with normal every day functions therefore in a nursing home, would you want to be resuscitated? Would you want to take up a ventilator knowing someone younger might need it? Knowing that only 44% of people who are ventilated survive anyway? Seeing anxious, stressed, overworked doctors and nurses trying to save you when there are so many others who need their care?

I don't think I would.
I would want someone kind and caring to be with me if my family couldn't be, but in fact, if I got to that stage, I would choose DNR.
It is an important question that needs to be asked, particularly now.

teacheranne this so sad for you and your mother. I cant give you any advice I'm afraid but just wanted to acknowledge you

That is very worrying, Teacheranne. A relative of mine is at a stage where she should possibly be in a care home but that is not possible at the moment and, on the whole, we think she is probably safer at home even though we worry she may try to go for a wander.

I agree Callistemon, safer at home. I'm very worried about the emergency measures in place for care.

Minimum staffing levels (daytime only, there weren't any for night anyway) and standards of care (already disgracefully low) no longer apply.

Norovirus (winter vomiting bug) has a history of spreading like wildfire in institutions with shared facilities and staff. Residents have been confined to their rooms to try to contain it. This must be happening now for the virus.

Thanks to the responses to my concerns, I think if mum had not fallen and ended up in hospital, we would have coped with supporting her at home. The care agency who were going in three times a week at weekends had offered three visits a day but now they have suspended the contract ( standard procedure if a client is in hospital for two weeks or more so we don't need to pay) I doubt they will still have the capacity.

My sister could continue being mums main Carer three or four days a week provided that she and her family ( hubby, two teenage children and her sister in law who has moved in for the lockdown) remain healthy but there is no guarantee that we could keep mum isolated and safe. So we have to accept the decision and hope that mum remains healthy and is well looked after.

She is a very healthy, mobile and feisty 87 yr old so she will fight her corner!

Some ARE being admitted to hospital: the ones who are for escalated care

Otherwise why admit to hospital? To die on an isolation ward instead of their own homes?

There IS no treatment. The people in hospital with CV arent getting "cured" there. They are just there to monitor whether they need ITU support or not.

So why admit someone who will is not for that sort of escallation?

Maybe, if a cure is found that can be done at ward level, but until then people are only admitted to hospital if they are for hospital treatment

Its not a holding pen for people who care homes dont want to treat.

Hospital staff looking after CV people who arent been ventilated dont wear any special PPE that isnt already available in care homes for other things. Just normal bog standard gloves and aprons and surgical masks, maybe visers if they cough. Things that care homes mostly stock for personal care and other infectious diseases

They would be cared for by HCAs mostly if they werent having any hard core intervention, many NHS HCAs also work in care homes so its the same people

They would not be cared for by people in filter masks and full length haz suits. Whether in hospital or not. That is for people having ITU level support. So why put them through that?

There is nothing a hospital ward can offer a person with CV who isnt going to be admitted to ITU if they deteriorate. Nothing extra. Except a horrible experience.

There is no special training. There is no cure. A person who isnt going to be ventillated wouldnt have people using specialist PPE with them in hospital either.

What do care homes want hospitals to do for people that they have no cure or treatment for?

Its a choice between wait and see and palliative care. And care homes are already equipt and trained for those two options. There is nothing else. That is all anyone has in their tool box for CV in cases where ITU wouldnt be considered.

Hospitals got nothin new or special that care homes dont have.

And yes, that is terrible. And scary. Its a horrific disease. GOD WILLING we will in future have some sort of treatment other than: wait it out, try and survive, ITU if orans fail. But wr dont yet and carehomes cannot be offloading people to die in isolation wards rather than their own homes.

Trying to admit people from care homes just because they have any CV symptoms doesnt even protect the rest of the carehome!

What little we do know about CV is that by the time you havw symptoms, you'll have already shared CV with your household. So isolate together as there is no point separating once sympoms develop if you've had contact up to that point.

So sending them off in an ambulance to sit on an isolation ward for pointless monitoring if they wouldnt have ITU if they deteriorates, serves no medical or infection control purpose, so would just be cruel! And the carehome they were shipped out of will already have it anyway.

Care homes have more single room capacity than hospitals too.

What is also unacceptable is the carehomes where people caught coronavirus from refusing to have them back to die at home, when they were admitted with CV its not something they caught in hospital. So their carers were already either exposed or were the ones who transmitted it.

Evictions were supposed to be banned during lockdown. Carehomes need that memo

I think this could be about the fact that many old people die with COVID-19 rather than because of it. As I understand it that means that the underlying cause of their death is something they’ve had all along and the COVID-19 virus just makes the underlying problem worse, bad enough to kill them.

I don’t think that deaths in care homes are the only ones affected by this. I suspect that in due course there will be a great deal of research about the effects of COVID-19 on people with underlying serious health issues, and who were also old.